L is for:
by F.A. Star Hawk
Summary: AU. An affectionate mad scientist and his loyal assistant. How they met, and a typical day in their life.


FASH: This is probably a little OOC, but I'm too amused by it to care. :)

Disclaimer: I'm just a fan(girl).

L is for: Laboratory

-x-x-x-

Upon graduating high school with average-at-best grades, no idea about what he wanted to do in life, and no connections to help him get a particularly well paying job, Sena had been almost certain that he was doomed to live out his life in near-poverty, stuck working a job any high schooler could get.

He'd been handing out resumés to any place he thought might hire him, which made up an admittedly short list, when a sudden gust of wind had ripped the papers out of his hands.

He hadn't been the only one to fall victim to the gale, and upon seeing the tall person ahead of him frantically begin chasing after his own set of papers, Sena figured he may as well help out.

He could always print himself some more resumés, but the documents of the person in front of him seemed to be very important.

He jogged towards the area where a fair amount of the papers had been blown, knelt down and began to quickly scoop them up, wary of another burst of wind carrying them even farther away. After picking them all up he approached the fretting brunette who had finished collecting all the other pages and, after coughing softly to catch his attention, held the papers he had collected out to him.

"I think these are yours." He managed to say lamely as the man stood up, allowing Sena to get a good look at him for the first time.

He was pretty easy on the eyes, and Sena would be lying if he said the grateful smile he was receiving didn't make his heart skip a beat.

"Oh my, thank you so much! It's rare to become acquainted with such nice people these days." He said, smile growing even more as he took the papers from Sena. "So, what do you think of my ingenious plans?"

"P-plans?" Sena stuttered, unsure if he was supposed to know what the taller brunette was going on about.

"Oh? You didn't look at my papers? How very trustworthy of you." He rubbed his chin, and his eyes lit up.

"Kobayakawa Sena, I presume?"

Sena's eyes widened and he took a frightened step back.

"Ah! Don't be scared, I happened to find one of your resumés on the ground along with my blueprints, so I was wondering, would you like to be my assistant?"

Somehow Sena had found himself agreeing before he could even properly think it over.

Yamato was the type of person you just couldn't say 'no' to.

And that's why the fact that his boss, Yamato Takeru, was a 'mad scientist' came as a bit of a shock, as did the fact that Yamato insisted that Sena move out of his parent's house to stay in Yamato's 'lair' so that he was always available.

On the bright side, at least his job proved to be an interesting one.

Sena didn't think he was a very useful assistant, especially in a lab. He'd never been good at science, or any other significant subject in school, and all he really did was jot down notes on how experiments were progressing, and organize things. Yamato seemed to think he was irreplaceable though, which gave Sena a small boost of pride, since he'd never felt so valued before, and it also enabled him to put up with Yamato's... Strange behaviour.

When Yamato had said he was a mad scientist, Sena had thought that every once in a while he'd let out some maniacal laughter, would sometimes do experiments that Sena would do his best to ignore, and possibly try and take over the world. He hadn't expected this.

"Sena, are you awake?"

Sena mumbled and slowly opened his eyes, coming face to face with his boss. It had taken him weeks to get used to waking up to his personal space being invaded, and even after that it had taken him a while to get used to sharing a room with Yamato.

That's right, he and Yamato slept in the same room, on a set of beds that had barely three feet of space between them. The main reason for this way because the rest of Yamato's lair had been completely taken over by equipment before Sena became his assistant, and, unless Sena wanted to sleep on a floor on which many suspicious liquids had fallen, there was no other place for him to stay.

"Ah, so you are awake, for a moment I was worried you'd stay sleeping." Yamato said as he grabbed ahold of Sena's hands and pulled him up into a seated position.

"Stay sleeping?" Sena repeated tiredly, the cogs in his brain slowly beginning to turn. "You didn't... Do anything to me in my sleep again, did you?"

"Sena, I would never do anything to you in your sleep!" Yamato claimed, aghast. "As I explained to you before, the only time I tested anything on you; I slipped it into the warm milk I prepared for you, and you were awake when you drank it."

"... It put me to sleep for _three days_..."

"Yes, but you forgave me for that, which is why you're the best assistant ever!" Yamato ruffled his hair fondly. "And thanks to you helping me test _Unnamed Substance 21_, I was able to easily infiltrate the city's aquarium and get samples for my latest experiment! Besides, I paid you for those three days of rest!"

"Ah, how gracious of you."

"I know." Yamato flashed him a smile that was on par with the sun in it's brightness, and dug into the pocket of his lab coat to pull out his safety goggles.

"Now then, I have something special to show you right now, follow me."

Sena did so with some reluctance, not feeling entirely comfortable wandering around the lab in nothing but his pajamas, but he assumed whatever Yamato wanted to show him wouldn't blow up, otherwise the young man would have insisted on his wearing safety equipment.

Yamato lead him through the maze of a space, finally stopping in front of a large, strange looking machine that Sena was sure hadn't been there a couple of days ago when he was cleaning.

Yamato had been burning the midnight oil again, Sena was going to have to slip the man some of his own _US 21_ in order to get him to catch up on sleep.

"So, what do you think?" Yamato asked proudly as he stood in front of the machine.

"It looks like a prop from an alien movie." Sena answered truthfully. "Or maybe sort of like one of those chambers where people freeze themselves so they wake up in the future."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes, although I might like it even more if I knew what it did."

"Indeed! This is a special devise that I have created for the purpose of experimenting with DNA!"

Sena bit his lip, glancing in the direction of the machine again.

"And, um, if you don't mind me asking, what exactly do you plan on creating with this new DNA experiment?"

He just hoped it had nothing to do with clones, he didn't think he could handle more than one Yamato at a time.

Yamato's smile grew wider. "I'm glad you asked, my dearest assistant. Ah, you really are the best assistant a mad scientist could ask for! So different from all the other assistants my colleagues have, you're much more attractive, and so polite too!"

Sena's cheeks went dark, even though he was fairly used to Yamato's praise. "Sir? The DNA experiment..."

"Oh yes! I shall be creating a jellyfish with _wings_!"

"Oh my... That's quite a, uh, fresh idea. I certainly would have never thought of such a thing. It's very interesting!"

"Sena, you're the only one who truly understands my genius!" The taller man exclaimed before abruptly engulfing the smaller one in a hug.

"Well, I'm sure once your latest plan succeeds a lot more people will realize that your ideas are really amazing!" Sena flattered as he tried to sneakily worm his way out of the embrace.

Yamato just held him tighter to his chest. "You're right! Soon the entire city will fall before us, just imagine..." He removed one arm to sweep it in front of them, the other keeping Sena firmly anchored to his side. "Once I finish this, thousands of jellyfish will soar through the skies, stinging people freely, no longer confined to the ocean. They'll be the smaller kind of jellyfish though, of course, I want to cause chaos and mayhem, not death. Good heavens no."

Yamato, despite being a mad scientist, was oddly nice. In an 'I'm going to steal your cell phone, but leave a list of all your contacts and their numbers' kind of way. Not that he would ever tell the other man that, he wasn't sure how Yamato would take it. He tried so very hard to be 'evil', after all.

"Well, it will certainly be an astounding sight to see when it happens, and if it all goes well the League of Extreme Evil would certainly welcome you into their ranks."

"Yes! And then we could be relocated to a better, more spacious lab, with more equipment!"

"And... And possibly more living space? Two bedrooms, maybe?"

"Hm? But I think it's essential that we sleep in the same room!"

"... You do?"

"Of course! Because being together builds up camaraderie and strong bonds!"

"Oh, I see." Well, Sena wouldn't bother arguing with his logic, otherwise Yamato might take it as a sign that their 'bonds' weren't strong enough, and then before he knew it they'd end up in the same bed. And Sena would never be able to live it down if anyone from his class, or his parents, found out that he was sleeping in the same bed as his employer, even if they weren't _doing anything_.

Oh well, at least his life wasn't the mundane bore that it had been before he met Yamato.

He spent the next couple hours of his day following Yamato around and compiling notes before forcing the other man to take a lunch break, as per usual. He'd been planning to slip the other brunette some US 21, because Yamato was starting to look worn out from the all-nighter he'd pulled to finish his DNA machine, but Yamato seemed to be reading his mind and vowed to take all of the following day off to rest.

"You promise?" Sena asked to be certain, not wanting his employer and friend to start dozing off in the middle of any dangerous experiments.

"Yes, cross my heart and whatnot. And if you don't believe me, I'll even allow you to prepare me a mug of warm milk before I go to bed tonight." Yamato smiled a particularly secretive smile.

Sena smiled back. "I'm sure that won't be necessary."

After lunch Yamato began going through with his jellyfish-with-wings experiment, pondering over what sort of wings would be best suited for it, and occasionally chuckling to himself in a half-crazed manner whenever he thought of something particularly interesting.

He eventually settled on using a sort of bird wing, although he'd also been very keen on dragon fly wings, and set about putting in all the proper DNA samples in his new machine, instructing Sena to push a certain series of buttons.

It took hours, several small scale explosions, getting stung by stray tentacles and facing off against one rather disturbing puddle of goo with claws and a beak to get it right, but after suffering for their science they finally managed to create a creature exactly to Yamato's specifications.

Sena was happy mostly because they finally knew how to properly make the Jellybird, as Yamato dubbed it, but quickly found that Yamato's excitement was contagious and that he couldn't suppress the smile blooming upon his lips.

"It's alive! It's _alive and flying_!" Yamato gestured above himself wildly before excitedly wrapping his arms around Sena in a nearly crushing embrance. "Sena, look at our first baby!"

Sena briefly wondered if every living creature Yamato created was going to be referred to as _their baby_, but found those troublesome thoughts melting away the longer Yamato held him.

Well, all in a day's work.


End file.
